RUDIMENTS 58.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 58

Making Cars

Man Alone. I think that was the title

of a book I read, back whenever, about

1965. Alienation, the crisis of modern

man, all that crazy stuff. That one was

written (talk about alienation?) by a

husband and wife team, Josephson or

something. And another one was called

'Fontanamara,' by an Italian writer who

called himself Ignazio Silone (not his

real name). Both of this book took time

and I was probably, really, over my head

with them each. But, that never stopped

me  -  who cared. I never felt 'alienated'

in the sense of it being a clinical 'condition.'

The entire feeling and sequence of emotion

was something I just lived with. I guess it

was alienation, but I don't know. The people

who claim to know all that stuff and who

then diagnose for it  -  on themselves or

others  -  they're the crazy ones in my

view; having to be having every little

thing named and called something

and settled with and cured or found

to be wanting, an illness, whatever

else it may be. Like reading the

entrails of a cat or standing around

to smell your own fart. Who the heck

has the time or energy for that myopic

stuff? I'd rather eat leather. Especially

today, when everything is a syndrome

or a diagnostic condition and all these

bizarre pharmaceutical types have cures

and pills and things for it all and the what

to watch out for list of 'may cause' stuff

ends up being weirder than the illness

itself. You must know, by that point, that

something's way off. With them, not you.

'May cause drowsiness sleep-walking

singing driving your car backwards only

swerving into telephone poles drinking

swimming pool water by the gallon only

while standing in a charcoal fire and calling

your pets by personal family names of the

dead.' Yep. OK. So, even thought I was

quickly a 'Man, Alone', I was not man-alone

alienated. It was more the drudgery and

anger of the idea of being mad at the world

for having me here. I was, besides that,

probably raging-crazed horny, liable to

slip the clothes off every girl I saw, and

at risk for stealing anything in my path

that I could see. I had a mean streak of

denial. I denied everything. It wasn't me.

I didn't do it. Heck yeah it was. I was as

vulnerable as hell and to blame for

everything. And culpable too.

-

What a concept, the whole 'man alone' thing.

In 1964 they'd still allow you to be alone; now

they jump all over a person to get with the

program and quit harboring secrets and secret

thoughts  -  let's get it right out there, talk it

through, we'll straighten you out. Yep, sure

swings my head around both left and right,

that stuff. There once was a different world,

and that's the one I came out of  - this new

one, now, I just don't get, and I really can't

communicate anyway. It was funny for me,

because all around me, Greenwich Village,

Washington Square Park, all those wonderful

old enclaves of homes, buildings, lights and

brick walks, they were all deadened too by the

passing day. I'd read all about the things

around there -   Henry James, Edith Wharton,

Hart Crane, Mark Twain, Tom Paine, and all

the rest  -  there were at least a hundred  - and

realize that I was walking in their steps and

breathing their air  -  and it started me sometimes,

having to take up that promise and raise to their

level of excitation and production. The excitation

and production, of course, of their own days

was of a totally different level and quality, one

which I only perhaps could dream of attaining.

First I had to want to. Mark Twain, for a while

in the period of his fame and high-personality

stuff, he lived right there over on 10th street.

He'd walk nightly, evenings, in his famed

white suit, big cigar, cane, slow amble, the

famous man out for a stroll  -  people would

approach, ask him great questions of the day,

and he'd opine. That rounding logic of his,

spouting forth with opinions and ideas; that

grand booming voice taking hold.

-

Very cool. I'd go over there now and the, to

 just sit, on the steps, for as long as I pleased.

no one cared and not anybody made much

of it  -  now there's a plaque and some info,

but back then no one cared or gave a hoot,

even if they knew about it  -  and I never

saw anyone else come by either. I'd sit

there and no cameras, no gawkers, would

bother. I kept waiting for my own Becky

Thatcher too, but then I realized that was

Tom Sawyer's babe, not Huck's. Shucks.

-

'In the nineteenth century, the single person

was a problem. What do you do with a single

person? In cities (I think of this now), the

solution was the boarding house, often run

by a matron, who served meals family style

and might scold you if you got home too late.

In 1842, one resident, Walt Whitman, declared

that Americans, or at least New Yorkers, were

'a boarding people.' Married men, and single 

men, old women and pretty girls, mariners

and masons, cobblers, colonels, and counter-

jumpers, tailors and teachers; lieutenants, loafers,

ladies, lackbrains, and lawyers; printers and

parsons....all go 'out to board.' Then, as a new,

mobile workforce flooded into cities, demanding

more freedom, boarding houses were largely

replaced by cheap hotels designed for the

long-term stay. As late as 1930, maybe one

housing unit in ten was some variation of

a residential hotel. The Barbizon, a

women's-only establishment at Lexington

Avenue and Sixty-third Street, opened in

1927, when large numbers of women

were beginning to work outside the home.

To its guests, the Barbizon offered closet-

sized rooms and lavish shared facilities: a

beauty parlor, a swimming pool, a sun deck, 

Turkish baths, a coffee shop, squash and 

badminton courts, a solarium, and a 

roof garden. To their parents, it afforded

the assurance of respectability: chaperones

roamed the hallways, and men were not

allowed above the first floor. Sylvia Plath,

a resident in the nineteen-fifties, featured

the Barbizon in 'The Bell Jar,' where it

appears as the Amazon, a hotel for rich 

young women who were all going to

pose secretarial schools.' If only. Anyone

I ever knew in NYC, for the most part,

lived and serviced in their hovel and

thought very little about it past its

serviceability. Amenities, indeed.

Man. Alone.